Category Archives: Tasty Tuesday

Because you have to feed them too

Light Waldorf Salad

Salad, Tasty Tuesday

Several years ago I found Waldorf salad and really enjoyed it. However now I cannot even recall what was in it. :D A couple of years ago I tried the waldorf salad in the THM cookbook. Prior to THM (Trim Healthy Mama) I would never have even given it a second thought because two of its main ingredients are cottage cheese and celery, neither of which are items I like. :D

Early in my THM journey, I was astounded to find that I could actually tolerate, and even like cottage cheese . . .  well, when it is blended. ;) I also found that if I dice up the celery small enough, it isn’t horrible if it isn’t being eaten alone. So when I saw this waldorf salad, I decided to give it a try. Now it is a favorite light lunch of mine.

Start by dicing an apple. To do so, I start by cutting it in half, pole to pole. Then I use a metal melon baller and remove the core from the center.

Cut out the stem and blossom end.

Cut each half into about 8 slices.

Then chop.

Put that in a bowl along with two stalks of finely diced celery and 1 cup of lowfat cottage cheese.

Finally chop up a couple of walnuts and add it to the bowl, with a bit of salt and a tablespoon or so of sweetener. I like things sweet so I use about 1-2 tablespoons of gentle sweet. ;)

Stir it all up and enjoy! :)

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Light Waldorf Salad

Ingredients

  • 1 apple, diced
  • 2 stalks celery, finely diced
  • 1 cup low fat cottage cheese
  • 1 1/2 tablespoons chopped walnuts
  • salt to taste
  • sweetener to taste (I use about 1-2 tablespoons gentle sweet)

Instructions

  1. Combine all in a bowl and enjoy. 🙂
https://lifeofjoy.me/light-waldorf-salad/

The original recipe used spicy nuts, black pepper, and chili pepper flakes too but I don’t prefer spicy, so I leave out the spiciness. :)

I hope you enjoy this light lunch. :)

Until next time, God bless,
Michele ºÜº

Pork Carnitas Meat

Main Dishes, Tasty Tuesday

After the first of the year I bought a Ninja Foodi with some Christmas money I had left over from my Christmas fund/budget. I’m enjoying learning to use it.

One of the things I made in my Instant Pot was carnita meat. I don’t say carnitas because we don’t serve it in tortillas. We just eat this delicious meat with caulirice and a salad.

I would get one of those huge pork butt roasts at $1.49 a pound (which I thought was a good deal until I found it nearly fifty cents cheaper a pound later); when I say huge, I mean it was about 10 pounds. I’d pressure cook the sucker for four hours or more. Then I’d shred the meat and package it into about three or four baggies and freeze it. When I fixed it for dinner, I’d thaw the meat and then heat it in a cast iron skillet with some oil and make one side very crispy . . . LOVE that crispy meat.

I went to Cox Costsaver and got one for around $1.00 a pound or so. I couldn’t fit that sucker in a gallon size baggie, so I cut it up to make it fit. :) When I first started shopping at WinCo they had that meat for like 99¢ or such, so I bought another one. But this time it was two roasts in one combined package. I asked them to cut it into three or four smaller pieces for me. That was a wonderful decision. I didn’t have to cut it myself and they have the ability to cut through the bone, when there is one.

Since I had this meat in a more manageable size I looked online to find a recipe in the Ninja Foodi. Oh my! I hit the jackpot. :)

Here’s basically how to make it:

Cut the approximately two pound roast into 2″ cubes and place it into the insert

Add 1/2 cup broth, an onion, and 6 crushed garlic cloves ( I just gave them a good whack with the side of my knife), salt, cumin, and oregano, and pressure cook on high for 20 minutes, then do a quick pressure release. Turn it on saute and simmer to reduce the juices for about 15 minutes.

I was concerned this time that I didn’t let it simmer long enough but turns out that I let it go a little too long. ;)

The next step is to lower the crisper lid and broil for 8 minutes.

Now would be the time to shred the meat if desired but we just like the cubes. :)

Head on over to the original website where she has a video of it too. She includes an orange but I don’t use it but then again, I’ve never had carnitas before fixing this at home either, so I don’t know what I’m missing. ;)

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Pork Carnita Meat

Ingredients

  • 2 pound pork butt cut into 2" cubes
  • one onion cut in half or onion powder
  • 6 garlic cloves, crushed or garlic powder
  • salt
  • cumin
  • 1/2 cup chicken broth

Instructions

  1. Place the meat cubes, broth, and seasonings into the ninja foodi insert.
  2. Place on the pressure lid, vent closed, on high for 20 minutes, quick pressure release
  3. Remove lid, saute on md:high for 15 minutes to reduce liquid.
  4. Close crisper lid and broil for 8 minutes.
https://lifeofjoy.me/pork-carnitas-meat/

I hope you enjoy this. Next time I make it, I’ll share how I make my husband some with other meat. :)

Until next time, God bless,

Michele ºÜº

Cajun Sausage, Rice, and Beans

Main Dishes, Sausage, Tasty Tuesday, ,

I have made this recipe from Briana Thomas’ newest cookbook, Convenient Foods, several times. The first couple of times I made it we enjoyed it but the last several times we have loved it. :)

Start by water sauteing a chopped onion in your skillet or dutch oven. :)

I like my onions very soft and starting to brown before I add the next group of ingredients: cooked brown rice, drained canned kidney beans, 6.5 ounces of sliced turkey kielbasi, 1/4 cup water, smoked paprika, oregano, garlic powder, salt, pepper, and cayenne.

It is very important to stir this all together, cover it, and let it simmer for 15 minutes.

Then add the optional 1/2 tablespoon of apple cider vinegar and 1/8 teaspoon THM Super Sweet. Cover and simmer 5 more minutes. This too is very important. It just really gives it a great flavor.

A couple times when I made this, I was out of smoked paprika but had plenty of plain paprika. So I added 1/2 tablespoon of paprika and then added a splash of liquid smoke. :) Yum!!!

Oh My! This is sooo good. It is making my mouth water and I’m full from eating my meal. :D

I also love her Hearty Barbecue Soup recipe. And I just saw that she has a birthday cake ice cream recipe. Birthday cake flavored ice cream is a new favorite flavor around here, so we’re going to have to give it a try.

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Cajun Sausage, Rice, and Beans

Ingredients

  • 1 medium onion, chopped
  • 2 Tablespoons water
  • 3 cups cooked brown rice
  • 15 ounce can dark red kidney beans, drained, rinsed
  • 6.5 ounce smoked lean turkey sausage (kielbasi), sliced
  • 1/4 cup water
  • 1/2 Tablespoon smoked paprika
  • 1 teaspoon oregano
  • 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
  • dash cayenne pepper
  • 1/2 tablespoon apple cider vinegar (optional)
  • 1/8 teaspoon THM Super Sweet Blend (optional)

Instructions

  1. Saute chopped onion in couple tablespoons of water until desired tenderness/color obtained, adding more water as needed.
  2. Add cooked brown rice, drained beans, sausage, water, smoked paprika, oregano, garlic powder, salt, pepper, and cayenne. Stir, cover, and simmer 15 minutes. (Add more water if it begins sticking.)
  3. Add vinegar and sweetener, stir, cover, and simmer another 5 minutes.
  4. Devour! 🙂
https://lifeofjoy.me/cajun-sausage-rice-and-beans/

If you haven’t gotten Briana’s cookbook, you really should. She has some great recipes in it. :) I make this one every couple of weeks. It is inexpensive and delicious. (The package of kielbasi from Aldi makes two batches. So I freeze half the sausage for use later in the month.)

I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as we do.

Until next time, God bless,

Michele ºÜº

Instant Lemon Glucomannan Pudding

Desserts, Tasty Tuesday, , , ,

It has been blazing hot here in sunny Oklahoma recently! I like light desserts when it is hot. So I’ve turned to puddings.

When I first tried things with glucomannan (or gluccie (pronounced with the k sound not the s sound), as referred to in THM), I did not like it at all. But over the couple of years that we have been following the Trim Healthy Mama eating lifestyle I have grown to the point that I now really enjoy it, especially in a pudding!

This recipe is done completely in the blender.

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Instant Lemon Glucomannan Pudding

Ingredients

  • 4 cups liquid (water, almond milk, any combination I use 2 cups water, 2 cups almond milk)
  • Juice of 2-3 lemons (or 4-7 tablespoons bottled lemon juice)
  • 2 pinches salt
  • 2 heaping Tablespoons THM Super Sweet or 1 scant cup sukrin melis (measures 1:1 with sugar)
  • slightly heaped tablespoon of glucomannan

Instructions

  1. Put all ingredients except glucomannan in the blender and begin to blend.
  2. While the blender is running, add the glucomannan and blend for 2 minutes
  3. Rest for a minute or so
  4. Blend for about another 2 minutes
https://lifeofjoy.me/instant-lemon-glucomannan-pudding/

Enjoy! I like to chill mine before I eat it so it is super refreshing. :)

Avocado Pudding

Tasty Tuesday

We decided to give avocado pudding another try. We hadn’t had it in a long time because it is so fatty and I’m really needing the lower calorie options and Tiffany wasn’t doing well with a lot of fat either. But recently she’s been able to handle fats better and avocados were on sale, so we decided to give it another go. :)

She set out to find a recipe that would work in our THM lifestyle and landed on Chocolate Covered Katie‘s site. I really like her recipes but have to make some modifications to adapt to THM and weight loss for me.

This is made simply in the food processor. Yay!!!

Start by putting the peeled and pitted avocados in the food processor.

Add cocoa powder (we just use Hershey) and she misread the directions and only uses 1/4 cup Hershey cocoa and no dutch cocoa or chocolate chips and it is still good. ;)

cashew milk

vanilla

salt

and sweetener. We use 1/4 cup of sukrin melis (which is a 1:1 sugar substitute, so swerve confectioner would work too or adjust the sweetener to your preference).

Then whirl away. :)

If it is a little too thick she drizzles a little heavy whipping cream (maybe about a tablespoon) in while it’s running.

Scrape it down and taste for sweetness. Give it a final whirl and we add about 8 drops of stevia glycerite. :)

And it’s done. (Oops! I forgot to take a final shot! :o We’ll have to make it again today so I can add some pictures!)

I hope you have a great day. Check out the full recipe over on Chocolate Covered Katie.

Until next time, God bless,

Michele ºÜº

Copper Pot and Tomato Paste

Tasty Tuesday

We got a copper pot from Aldi several months ago (it seems like a very long time ago but I don’t remember when it was). It was desperately needed, as the pot we had of that size was pretty scratched. However this is my first copper pot and I don’t know all the ways of such a thing. I figured I could just use it like any other non-stick pot.

Here’s a picture of the copper pot that I used to make the chocolate ganache for the Suzy Q cake last week.

A few weeks ago Tiffany made the pizza sauce in it and it tasted off. I just thought she didn’t season the tomato paste properly. Then the next week the same thing happened. Then last week I made the pizza sauce in the copper pan and it tasted nasty. I had to add and add and add things to make it edible. I wondered if something happened to the tomato paste we got at Aldi recently. It was weird.

I realized that these last several times were the first times we’d used this copper pot for pizza sauce, I think. So we decided to use a different pot last weekend. It still had a bit of an odd taste, according to Tiffany, but not anything near as bad as the previous weeks.

So, I’m not sure yet. I’m going to have to do some more testing to be certain. But I did notice that our copper pot now has some scratches, so maybe that is what is causing the bad taste.

At any rate, this is just a notification that you may not want to cook tomato based recipes in a copper pot! Just saying! :D

Until next time, God bless,

Michele ºÜº

Breakfast Options

Breakfasts, Tasty Tuesday, ,

I have a couple of different meals I like to eat for breakfast for the two main fuel types: two for healthy fats and two for healthy carbs. And on Saturdays we like to have pancakes or some other special breakfast. I thought I’d share my norms with you today.

Healthy Carbs

  • Oatmeal: I like to cook my 1/2 cup oats with 1/2 cup of almond milk and a cup of water. Some times I like it like this and other times I add some cocoa powder.
  • Toast: One to two pieces of toast, depending on the size of the bread. I spread a thin layer of peanut junkie butter (about a tablespoon) and then either some strawberry jam, strawberries, 1/2 a medium banana, or other fruit on top.

In the beginning, these didn’t fill me up for long. But once I added the extra 1/2 cup of liquid to the oats it did. If I’m not quite full enough, I add a cup of chocolate milk but I’m usually okay because I have a quart of oolong tea each morning, which is about two big mugs. Oh, my quart of oolong has a scoop collagen in it. :)

Healthy Fats

When I have fats as my fuel source, I try to have vegetables. My main veggie of choice is either zucchini or cauliflower. I like to add onion, green or red pepper, and mushrooms as well.

  • Two Fried Eggs on a bed of diced zucchini sprinkled generously with nutritional yeast.
  • Breakfast Caulirice: the key to this one is to season it well. The recipe I follow uses some miso, nutritional yeast, onion powder, garlic powder, hot sauce, salt, pepper, and parsley (and/or other herbs). Mix seasonings with two eggs and then add to chopped up (riced) cooked cauliflower and cook until eggs are done.
  • Bonus meal: I like to add sausage to sauteed veggies. This is wonderful eaten in an on-plan tortilla and a wedge of light laughing cow cheese (if’ I’m watching calories) or cheese of choice. The laughing cow is good because it eliminate my need for mayonnaise and is a lot lower in calories.

 

These are my breakfast go-tos. On Saturdays I usually make oat pancakes and then have a bit leftover for Sunday mornings. This gives me a good mix of breakfast fuels and provides veggies for breakfast easily a few mornings a week. :)

I hope this helps you in your search for healthy breakfasts.

Until next time, God bless,

Michele ºÜº

Suzy Q Cake

Desserts, Tasty Tuesday

Last year for my birthday I had a hard time picking between the Italian Cream Cake and the Ding Dong Cake by Carolyn Ketchum of All Day I Dream About Food. I opted for the Italian cream cake because the ding dong cake used a boxed Swerve cake and that wasn’t available to us.

Well, this year I got the brilliant idea to use the THM Trimtastic chocolate cake in place of the cake mix. It is an easy recipe and is made in a food processor. (I only use an inexpensive one.) It whips up quickly.

Trim Healthy Mama Cookbook pg 296 or on the THM membership site.

It is healthier because it has zucchini in it. :) Yay! Veggies that taste good!

You start by processing the zucchini a bit, to break it up a little. Then you add the remaining ingredients and blend until the zucchini is not detectable. :)

We didn’t get a picture of how it looked in the processor when done. But here it is in the pan. Because we are going for a Suzy Q-like cake, we baked it in a 9×13 pan. Then cut it into two pieces. We’ll use parchment paper next time though, as some part of it stuck almost every time. ;)

You can still see some bits of zucchini in this one that Tiffany made and it still turned out delicious!

Next we followed the cream and “frosting” directions here. Now, Tiffany is the one who prepared this and she doesn’t quite have the frosting down yet but it was still yummy in spite of how it looked.

You could make any of your favorite chocolate low carb cakes for the cake part. We love the moistness of the Trimtastic. And you could make it in round pans, as Carolyn did on the swerve site for a ding dong cake. Or you could make it in a sheet pan, spread the cream on top and roll it up and then pour the ganache all over it for a swiss cake/ho-ho style cake. So many delicious presentation options. :D

We have enjoyed this cake so much that we have made it three times in a week!

I believe this is the cake Tiffany wants for her birthday in a couple of weeks, so hopefully I will remember to get some more pictures. ;)

Until next time, God bless,

Michele ºÜº

PS. For those wanting to try this with standard sugar, just substitute a devils food cake for the cake layer and powdered sugar in the same amount as the swerve confectioners in both the cream and the glaze layers; I think that will work but taste to be sure. ;)

Menu ~ Lifeofjoy.me

Menu for the Week

Menu, Tasty Tuesday

Sometimes it helps me to see what other people are making to get ideas for my own menu. So I thought I’d share our menu with you this week.

  • Ribs, Caulitaters, and salad (low carb meal)

  • Sourdough Pizza and salad (Healthy carbs, low fat meal)

taco ~ lifeofjoy.me

  • Tacos (made with low carb tortillas; low carb meal)

Spaghetti ~ Lifeofjoy.me

  • Spaghetti and Salad ;) (made with either zoodles, Dreamfields pasta for low carb meal)

This is actually one of my favorite menus. :) Lots of favorite foods.

I hope this helps give you ideas for your next menu or just simply what to eat for dinner. :)

Until next time, God bless,

Michele ºÜº

 

My Birthday Special Food

Tasty Tuesday

Tiffany was hard at work yesterday making some things for my birthday this week.

She made Italian Cream Cake from All Day I Dream About Food. This has been my birthday cake choice for the last several years. :) This delicious cake is a THM “S” or keto dessert. I love it! :) We do forgo the coconut flakes though. We did try it with it the last couple of times but opted to skip it this time. :)

This year for my birthday breakfast, Tiffany suggested sourdough bagels. We decided this was an awesome idea. She suggested the Everything Bagel Seasoning on them. We decided we’d do some with that and for others we’d add blueberry, but  also do some plain. :)

I’ll add light laughing cow cheese when I eat these to keep them . :)

She worked really hard on them. It is the first time we’ve ever made homemade bagels and then she did them by herself and with so many options. She might have overcompensated for the final rise a bit too much and stretched them a little bit too thin but that’s okay. I think she did a great job. :)

I’ll share some more of my birthday food next week, but I’m going to run for now. Birthday time to enjoy. :)

Until next time, God bless,

Michele ºÜº